San Juan Capistrano moves toward council districts

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO – When it comes time to elect City Council members this fall, San Juan Capistrano residents can expect to find the city divided into voting districts.

On a 5-0 vote, the City Council launched a plan to transition into voting districts in time for the Nov. 8 council elections. San Juan might be split into five districts – one for each council seat – or four districts electing four council members and a mayor being picked by the entire town.

Anaheim, Buena Park, Garden Grove and Fullerton are among other Orange County cities moving in this direction.

The action comes in response to a lawsuit that the Southwest Voter Registration Project and local residents Tina Auclair and Louie Camacho filed Jan. 27. It asserts that San Juan’s at-large election process violates the California Voting Rights Act of 2001.

Latinos represent about 40 percent of the city’s population, the suit said, but at-large voting has prevented them from electing candidates of their choice.

Council members decided not to fight the suit on advice from City Attorney Jeff Ballinger. He said other California cities are being forced into district elections and, given the low threshold it takes to establish a valid claim under the voting-rights law, most cities are adopting districts to avoid litigation costs.

Councilman Derek Reeve said he supports voting districts.

“I believe they are something we should embrace,” he said. “They are consistent with the founding fathers’ idea of representative and smaller constituencies, if you will. I won’t say my true feelings about how this came about, but nonetheless I think we can make the best of a situation and San Juan will be better for it.”

Councilman John Perry said it will affect the way people are elected in the city.

If some districts have as few as 4,000 voters and there is a 30 percent turnout, “it gets to be a ridiculously low-number threshold to get someone elected,” he said.

The city will hire a demographer to help draft district boundaries, engaging voters at public forums to collect input. The council directed city staff to vet potential demographers, checking with the League of California Cities to see what demographers other cities have used and how it went.

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